Evolvement of wireless communication systems may typically have as one aim to improve throughput and capacity compared to earlier wireless communication systems.
One example of a wireless communication system currently under evolvement is UMTS rescaled LTE, which is a further evolvement of UMTS LTE (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System, Long Term Evolution). In UMTS rescaled LTE the sample rate may be increased with a factor of N and the bandwidth per subcarrier may also be increased with a factor of N. For example, N may be equal to 5.
In UMTS rescaled LTE, there will be support for low latency (LL) applications with high reliability. One example of a low latency, high reliability application may be transmissions of alarms.
Low latency may, for example, be defined as a latency lower than a normal latency of the wireless communication system. In UMTS rescaled LTE, one example of a low latency may be a time between scheduling grant to scheduled resource of 1 ms or 2 TTI (transmission time interval), and an example of a nominal latency may be 4 TTI.
High reliability may, for example, be defined as an error rate lower than a normal error rate of the wireless communication system. In UMTS rescaled LTE, one example of a high reliability may be a BLER (BLock Error Rate) of 10−9.
One approach to enable low latency applications with high reliability is to introduce a separate radio access technology (RAT) and/or use a separate frequency interval (e.g. a separate frequency bandwidth) for such applications.
Another approach to enable low latency applications with high reliability is to mix the traffic of the low latency applications with the normal (e.g. mobile broadband) traffic of the wireless communication system. This is an approach envisioned for UMTS rescaled LTE.
That the requirement regarding time between scheduling grant to scheduled resource is different for the low latency applications compared to the normal traffic may be problematic.
Therefore, there is a need for approaches that guarantee fulfillment of the latency requirement of low latency applications mixed with the normal traffic of a wireless communication system.